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03/15/2005:

"Street protests by poor push Bolivia to the brink"

Scratching her swollen and shoeless feet after digging up her potato field, Roberta Centeño looks exhausted but says she has plenty of energy for the struggle ahead.

"We blocked roads before and we will do it again," says the Aymara Indian mother of 12. "It is the only way the government ever listens, they want to just think about the rich."

Sitting on the kerb with his family, their feet in sewage, unemployed mechanic Estanislao Mamani says he, too, believes it is the right time to demand more. "We will paralyse the country when the order comes," he says.

Ms Centeño lives in a hamlet on Bolivia's vast highland plain, 4,000 metres (13,000ft) above sea level, which also houses the sprawling working-class city of El Alto.

From the potato fields to the slums, South America's poorest country is a political time bomb which, analysts say, could explode at any moment.

In recent weeks, a wave of street protests by indigenous and labour groups opposing the government's economic policies have almost crippled the country. Trade unions have called a 48-hour strike starting today.

Roadblocks of stones and tree trunks have cut off one region in the centre of the country for weeks, with long lines of trucks filled with rotting produce unable to move and reports of shortages in some towns. Meanwhile, the political leaders of Bolivia's poor, primarily indigenous majority are poised to extend the protests nationwide from tomorrow unless the government gives in to their demands.

Their central demand is 50% royalty payments on exports of Bolivia's natural gas, which are bought by foreign companies, most notably Petrobras in Brazil, Repsol in Spain and BP.

The government and the private sector say this would turn the country into a no-go area for foreign investment. "Fifty per cent is like saying to foreign investors in so many words, don't come here," says Eduardo Bracamonte, head of the national exporters' association. "The image of Bolivia has seriously deteriorated already. The perception of the risk of doing business has gone up enormously and we all suffer because of that."

There are other tensions between the people and the government, ranging from pressure to kick out the French water company which is running the services in El Alto to the prices of bus tickets.

Today, human rights officials had been expected to bring together the major players to seek a compromise on the royalties issue, but plans for the meeting fell apart when the president, Carlos Mesa, decided not to attend.

Last week, the centrist President Mesa seemed to strengthen his chances of bringing the situation under control when his offer to resign was unanimously rejected by parliament. But pressure on the president from the middle and upper classes to crack down on the protests is growing, prompting rumours that he will declare a state of siege.

Since Bolivia's revolution of 1952 petered out, the country has suffered bloody dictatorships and corrupt democratic governments interspersed by political turmoil which one analyst, Alvaro Garcia, describes as power struggles between those at the top. What is different now, he says, is that groups representing the poor indigenous majority have begun to challenge the traditional elite, mostly of European origin and US-educated.
guardian.co.uk

The indigenous people of the Andes have been challenging their white invaders since Pizzarro showed up on the Inca altiplano in 1532, and they were not poor then.